Radio Liberty: 'Ukrainan Rebels Are Shelling Themselves'

Here is the actual language: “The ATO* spokesmen [Major General Taran and colonel Sergei Galushko] have presented proof that Donetsk is being shelled by the rebels themselves, in order to provoke return fire from the UAF forces, and then blame them for shelling Donetsk.” Source

So, here is the reality as presented by "Voice of Langley" in East Europe:

The rebels start randomly shelling their own families in Donetsk. UAF see it, get “provoked” by somebody else doing their job, and start indiscriminately shelling Donetsk as well.

Now we just wait for John Kirby and Co. to start parroting these claims…

Radio Liberty in Ukrainian

The actual reality is slightly less insane than RFE/RL reporting, but only slightly:

Those conflicting claims were made by the two officers separately, i.e. Galushko claimed that the “rebels are shelling themselves”, and Taran claimed that “rebels are provoking return fire at civilian areas of Donetsk”, but those two officers were speaking about the same event - and sitting next to each other - as they said these things.

Either way, both the RFE/RL reporting and the ATO briefing claims are completely out of touch with the real world:

God/evolution gave humans directional hearing - the locals can hear perfectly well which direction the shots fired from, and where are they landing.

The only way for the rebels to fool the population as to who is firing would be to shell from frontline positions next to airport – but the ATO spokesmen, in their struggle against reality, always claim that the rebels are shelling from the complete opposite direction (south-east as opposed to north, in this specific case).

Same goes for “firing positions next to houses” – any time the rebels do this, it ends up on Youtube within a couple hours. Yes, there were some cases, but few and far between.

Moreover, setting up artillery on asphalt is just inconvenient – whenever we do see those videos, it’s usually Grad trucks in a city, or set up in city parks (a friend in Dzerdzhinsk recently told me UAF arty is set up in their town park, in the center).

It is worth noting that Galushko presented a “radio intercept recording” that supposedly supported his claims, but as usual with SBU pieces it was simply a mish-mash of isolated phrases cut out of half a dozen different conversations; moreover, it mentioned locations that were quite some distance from places being shelled. Sharii has an excellent video on the subject.

Unfortunately, it is not subtitled yet (as of 4pm, July 20th), but his people usually add subs within a day.

Note:

*ATO= anti-terror operation. Kiev regime cannot call the civil war what it is, or else they won’t get IMF loans the bankrupt government uses to finance said war, so they call it “ATO”.

Ironically, this makes their actions both illegal (a lot of things they’re doing, e.g. forced conscription, detention without trial, use of army within the country, etc. are only legal once war has been declared) and makes them the terrorists (indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas is terrorism by any definition).

** Also worth referencing my previous translation on RFE/RL, about how anti-Putin journalist Babitsky was RFE's darling when reporting on Russian war crimes in Chechnya - even US Secretary of State Albright supported him directly - but as soon as he happened to report a war crime by nationalist forces he has seen first-hand in the Donbass, he was instantly fired from RFE. "Liberty" on that radio has some very harsh limits, heh.